


The Deer and the Tick

by Zeke Black (istia)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M, Old West, POV Ezra Standish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 11:20:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15728361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: Ezra and Chris meet three months after Ezra left Four Corners.





	The Deer and the Tick

"Room for another?" a raspy voice said and Ezra froze in the middle of shuffling.

Without waiting for an answer, Chris grabbed a chair from a nearby table and seated himself opposite Ezra. The two men on either side of him moved their chairs accommodatingly to the sides.

"Always room for another, friend. Jake Hogstein." He held out a hand, which Chris took. "New to town?"

"Chris Larabee. Arrived this afternoon."

He didn't look at Ezra. Ezra flicked his eyes back down to the cards, finished shuffling them, then dealt the next hand to the five of them sitting around the table in a quiet saloon in a remote little place whose name he hadn't noted. He'd been here a day and a night. Restlessness was setting in, right on cue, so he'd expected to leave within another day or so at most. He hadn't stayed anywhere for longer than two, or rarely three, days during the entire past three months of wandering. Hell, some places he'd stayed only overnight, just long enough to let his horse have a decent rest and feed.

They played the hand in an easy silence, the locals relaxed, seeming to sense none of the tension snaking its way up Ezra's back like gooseskin. Ezra discarded the king of hearts and dealt himself a five of spades; the pot hadn't built up sufficiently yet to make it worth his while to win. Best to let the others continue to have small wins, keep them happy and ready to throw more coins into the pot as the evening progressed.

While Ezra was dealing the next round, the talkative, friendly Jake said to Chris, "Come to town for business, Mr. Larabee? We don't see too many travelers here, so far off the beaten track as we are."

Chris smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes, which he kept on his cards. Ezra twitched his own eyes away again, registering his own cards only hazily.

Chris took a drink from the beer he'd brought over to the table with him, then said in the same quiet rasp, "I've been looking for somebody."

Jake and the other two men exchanged uneasy glances as tension suddenly rose between them. "You a bounty hunter?" one of them asked.

"Nah, nothing like that." Chris's voice was as laid-back as his lean body in the chair. "I made a mistake awhile back with a friend. Second worst mistake of my life. The first got my wife and son killed because I wasn't home to protect them. I'm aiming to fix this mistake if I can before it's too late."

Even Jake seemed at a loss on how to reply to that confession. He murmured a platitude, then the conversation turned back to incidental nothings between him and his neighbors at the table.

Ezra paid no attention to the cards he dealt during that round. At its end, when the pock-marked liveryman claimed the pot with a beaming smile, Ezra stood.

"Gentlemen, I'll have to excuse myself. Something I ingested appears to have disagreed with me. I'll take some air and have an early night."

He tipped his hat at the three locals and left. The air here at the foothills of the Sawatch Range in Colorado was clear and cold on this October night. As he walked rapidly down the street toward his boarding house, his path lit by the light of the almost full moon, his thoughts were focused only on packing his belongings and leaving immediately.

But even as he formed the resolve, his steps slowed as he acknowledged its folly. He had no reason to act impetuously. He had a moderately comfortable bed awaiting him in a moderately warm room. Only a fool would rush off and risk his horse injuring a leg in the dark, even with the moon as a beacon.

He turned instead down the alley that led to the livery. Entering the barn, with its warmth and familiar smell of hay and horseflesh, he went to his gelding, who was dozing in his stall, clean and comfortable. He spoke quietly until the animal opened his eyes to look at him, then Ezra stroked the glossy chestnut coat, drawing comfort from the simple mundanity of the action. The gelding nuzzled at his jacket, then his eyes dropped shut again.

Ezra smiled and stepped back. He turned his head to look down the row of stalls, then walked to the big black gelding on the opposite side of the aisle. He could see Chris's saddle at the back of the stall.

"Had a long trip?" he said, after he'd let the gelding identify him and knew it was safe to stroke his fine, powerful neck. He leaned forward and whispered, "Don't worry. You should be heading home soon."

Clearly, the only practical thing to do was get the meeting Chris had traveled far in search of done and over with. If Ezra disappeared into the night, it seemed obvious that Chris would simply follow. Accepting the inevitable, Ezra returned to the saloon.

Chris was on the boardwalk, leaning against a post a few feet away from the light spilling out past the batwing doors. Wreathed in shadows, the tip of his cigarillo glowed in the dark. Ezra stepped onto the boardwalk and stood on the other side of the post. He set his eyes on the long stripe of moonlight running at an angle across the main street.

"How did you find me?"

"You're not that hard to track." Chris kept his voice low, too.

"You're no tracker."

Chris chuckled. "Not in Vin's league, but it didn't need reading tiny signs to follow your path."

Ezra let that sit for a few moments before saying, "I didn't expect to be followed."

"Reckon not." Chris still sounded easy and unhurried, but he flipped the cigarillo butt into a puddle agleam in the moonlight. Then he straightened and turned to face Ezra. "Meant what I said in there."

Ezra turned to look him straight on. "I believe you made your feelings perfectly plain at our last meeting. As I recall, you claimed there was no chance they'd change."

He could see Chris's features well enough now, here in the shadows, to note them twist. Chris's eyes looked straight into his.

"I was wrong."

Ezra laughed involuntarily, but cut it off short as he heard its bitterness. "And when did you come to that conclusion?"

Chris tilted his head. "Can we walk?"

Ezra nodded. He led the way to the empty corral behind the livery, too far from any out buildings to be overheard.

Chris took an audible breath. He leaned against the fence and tucked his hands into his gunbelt. His hat was hanging down his back and the moon lit his fair hair above the dark blot of his clothes. Ezra placed himself a couple of arms' length away, feet planted apart.

"Sixth morning after you'd left, I woke up at the shack to emptiness and coldness and a bitching deep silence, just like all five days before. Knew it was my own doing and that was gonna be the rest of my damned life if I didn't try to mend what I'd broken."

"Hmm." Ezra rubbed his hands together in the crisp air. "So you've been following me for the past three months?"

He could see Chris shrug. "Like you said, I'm not Vin. You been on the move almost nonstop. And I was a week behind you."

"Tsk, excuses." He shook his head. "So, let me see if I understand: Because you don't like waking up in a cold bed, you decided to come haring after me."

"I can stand the cold. It's the hell-fired loneliness that's hard to accept when it's no longer been part of your life for a year, then suddenly it's back."

Ezra kept reins on the anger burning its way up his gullet. "Well, you've wasted a lot of time coming in the wrong direction, then, haven't you? There're plenty of warm beds and all the company a man could desire in Purgatorio. You've should've turned south rather than north."

He turned to leave, but Chris surged forward and grabbed his arm. "Dammit, Ezra, it's not _anybody_ I miss. It's you: your body, the smell of you, touching you. It's you." He let go of Ezra's arm; it tingled where he'd gripped it, but Ezra didn't move away. "I miss the way you moan when I touch you and how soft but demanding your mouth is when we kiss and that you always throw a leg over mine when you sleep."

Ezra swallowed, but kept the bitterness out of his voice, pleased at how steady and cool it sounded: "Somebody else in your bed would soon enough become habit."

He could actually see the glare in Chris's eyes aimed at him. "For bitching sake, it's your fucking prissy voice I miss constantly talking, filling the dark spaces, bringing light in. It's you. It's not--" He paused, voice going ragged. When he continued, his voice had steadied. "Nobody else is you."

He didn't think he'd ever heard Chris utter that many words in a row. They rang with sincerity--and maybe a touch of desperation.

But he'd thought he felt sincerity in Chris during their year together, in their snatched secret times out at his shack; their nights together, their mornings. Till Ezra had mentioned future plans and Chris had laughed and said they had no future.

He looked down at the dark earth, but felt Chris's eyes holding steady on him. Waiting.

"What will you do if I say no and leave?"

He looked up in time to see Chris shrug lightly. "Follow you."

"For God's sake, Chris, that makes no sense."

"I got nowhere I need to be anymore'n you do."

"You've got your shack, your land; your plans for a ranch. Your friends. The lawkeeping you find so inexplicably satisfying."

"I've started over before and I can again. Anywhere you want to settle, we'll make it work."

Ezra gave up trying to keep his hands warm and stuck them in his coat pockets. He walked over to lean against the fence next to Chris. He lifted his eyes to the vast bowl of the star-studded sky above the mountains, noticing the glow of the snow-topped peaks in the moon's bright light. This place was beautiful in its own raw way, with mostly friendly folks, but it wasn't home. The sun wasn't as bright; the smiles weren't as warm.

Chris settled beside him, close enough that Ezra could feel his warmth, but not quite touching.

He turned his head to look at Chris. "You did an about-face on me not so long ago. I'm not sure I'm ready to trust again."

"Second worst mistake of my life," Chris repeated in a low, gravelly voice. "The first one cost me everything. I'll never be that stupid again."

Ezra let the silence settle over them for a few minutes before finally saying idly, "We're not even the tiniest bit alike. Most of our acquaintances think you'd as soon shoot me as look at me."

"That's other folk talking." Chris bent his head and cupped his hands around a match as he lit a cigarillo.

"Really, it's nothing short of astonishing that we got along as well as we did for an entire year."

"Yup." Chris's voice had a smile in it as he said, "Just like a deer and a tick."

Surprised into a snorting laugh, Ezra said, "I don't even want to ask which of us is which."

First time he'd genuinely laughed in three months, he realized. He dropped his head so his chin rested on his chest and shut his eyes. "Damn you, Chris," he muttered.

"Yeah."

The silence stretched to a couple of draws on Chris's cigarillo before he ground it out under his foot. "It's up to you. I'll keep my distance if that's what you want, but I ain't gonna just give up because you say so. Not yet."

Ezra pulled his hands out of his pockets and smoothed his hands down his clothes, setting them to rights. He straightened his shoulders. "Right, then. We'd best get some sleep so we can hit the trail home early. No point lingering, if we're going to do this."

Chris turned to face him, still keeping a good couple of feet between them. "Are we doing this?"

"Apparently we are." He let a wry note into his voice. "We managed an entire year last time. Maybe, this time, we'll manage to double that."

Chris's voice was light, but Ezra could hear the underlying sureness: "I'm thinking more in decades than years."

Ezra turned to walk back to town and Chris fell into step beside him. "A grizzled old bachelor gunslinger and an elegantly aging bachelor cardsharp settled down together for so long, out on the Larabee ranch, that nobody even pays it any mind any longer?"

Chris smiled. "Maybe. Or maybe we'll move on sometime. Long as we're together."

The word lingered in the air between them, like an oath. Chris was still now, beside him. Waiting.

Ezra finally let the tension ease out of his back and shoulders. "Together it is, then," he agreed quietly.

The backs of their hands brushed against each other just before they emerged from the alley beside the livery into the moonlit street.


End file.
